Miracle Beach by Erin Celello Page A

was hurt or angry, or in this case both, she cried. “You’d rather be there with her than here with me.”
    She knew she sounded juvenile and whiny. And yet, she had long ago stopped asking anything extra of Jack. In the early years of their marriage he had been up to his ears in the stress of starting a business. There had been debts to pay and long hours to work without so much as a dime of it going back into their pockets at first. Magda knew how hard he worked, and admired so much his drive and dedication. She had made it her mission to make the rest of his life as seamless as possible: potty training their son, then carting him to a never-ending series of events as he grew, managing the always-there mountain of laundry, making sure groceries were bought and dinner made. She had even dampened the desire to have another baby because of the financial pressure it would have placed on Jack and the need she would have had to involve him in the domestic front of his life.
    She hadn’t ever asked a thing of him before. Just this one time.
    “Magda, this isn’t about her or you. This is about me. What’s good for me.”
    Magda paced around the kitchen table, tethered to a course of half circles by the phone cord. “It’s about us, Jack. And you’re choosing her right now. I need you. I need you, and you’re choosing her over me.”
    “You can act like such a toddler sometimes, Magda. I don’t know how else to explain this to you. This is about me . Me and Nash. No one else. I’ve taken care of everyone else my whole damn life, and right now I just need a little time to take care of me. That’s all.”
    “Whatever,” said Magda.
    “Don’t do that, Magda,” said Jack. “Why don’t you give me a call tomorrow and we can talk this over when we’re both a little more rested?”
    She sat back down at the table, remembering the image that hadn’t really left her all day. The Luna Cafe grandmother. The way she smiled at her little grandson. The way he went to her, arms open, ready to be scooped up into hers.
    “Magda, this is going to be fine. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
    She didn’t answer. She just sat at the table, thinking of that woman and the boy. And then she started to sob. Big, loud, hiccuping sobs.
    “Magda?”
    “It’s not going to be fine tomorrow.”
    “I promise it is. Have some water and go to bed, and we’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”
    “You’re not hearing me, Jack.” That was one of her favorite Dr. Phil–isms. That people could be talking to you, but not hearing you. And that people needed to be heard to feel validated . “I’m never going to be a grandmother.”
    “Oh, Magda,” Jack said.
    But there was nothing more than that to say. He couldn’t say that it wasn’t so. He couldn’t tell her that she might be someday.
    So she hung up the phone. Then she laid herself down on the fresh, cool tiles of their kitchen floor and willed her world to stop spinning.

Chapter Seven

    “I’LL SEE YOU NEXT WEEK, MADAME!” MARTINE CALLED TO Macy.
    Macy waved to him, unusually relieved to see him go. Normally Macy looked forward to her biweekly lessons with Martine, this year especially, since they were working on qualifying Macy for Jump Canada’s Talent Squad, a precursor to World Cup competition and getting onto the Canadian Equestrian Team. But today, Macy couldn’t bring herself to partake in Martine’s joviality, which always seemed to be turned up a notch or two whenever he got to “horse around,” as he called it, with Macy.
    Martine had been a godsend for Macy. An accomplished show jumper in Paris, he had suffered a bad fall and permanently injured his back. Unable to continue riding, he followed his Canadian wife to Victoria and threw himself into earning a living teaching his native tongue. But he felt, as he would later tell Macy, like a “beached whale”—which Macy later learned was his way of saying “a fish out of water.” Right around that time, he had pulled up